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Friday, July 24, 2015

Five for Friday: 7-24-15

Happy Friday! I hope everyone has had a great week! It's been a good week for me!!! I'm linking up with Doodles Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky...here we go:

Nineteen days until I return to work! Such a bittersweet thought. I'm slowly but surely getting into the back to school mood. I'm slowing down my summer... I've had a busy summer and have been on the go a lot. So I'm gong to use these next couple of weeks to slow down... I've started thinking about my classroom and ideas galore! Below are some of my thoughts.

#I❤️hashtags: I love exploring hashtags, I've come across some really great people and ideas by simply clicking on a hashtag. This week I found a new hashtag on Twitter that I think will go over well in my classroom. I just need to work out a plan on how the use it, #emojigrading. Using emojis in grading. Has anyone done this? I actually think my students would love the emojis more than letter or percentages. I don't have a plan on what assignments or the best use for them yet, but I'm working on it.

Ryan Reed (@Ryan7Reed) on Twitter has posted several resources for #emojigrading. He also tweeted the emoji grading translation below. If you're interested in finding out more about #emojigrading I suggest following Ryan and Jon Smith, he began #emojigrading, on Twitter @Ryan7Reed @theipodteacher

Movies, I've seen a ton of them this summer! Knowing that movies are a great way to connect with students, I've been thinking about ways to incorporate some of this summer's blockbusters into my classroom. Pixels is one of the movies I anticipate my sixth graders to select as their favorites of the summer. I attended a prescreening earlier this week with my 12 year old nephew and he thought the movie was funny and AWESOME!!! If you're familiar with this age group there isn't a lot they find awesome! I asked him what made it awesome and his response was the video games were life like and the actors were playing the games. I would have to agree! I also like the use of "old school" games. I was a pretty good gamer back in the 80s:) I just don't get these video games the kids play today, including my nephew. However, I do know it's a great way to connect with students, so I picked up some Pixel posters and plan to use them in my classrom...possibly having a gaming reading section.

Another movie that I plan on bringing into my classroom this year is the Minions! I personally did not like this movie, but it's appealing to kids especially with all of the merchandise available. While cleaning out some files this summer I found 5 sheets of these stickers...

I'm going to use them to motivate students to read. I plan on selecting a variety of books, from my classroom library, and placing one of these stickers inside the book. Students will then be encouraged to read the books, write a review and they will earn a minion reward...I've already started collecting the rewards thanks to Target's dollar spot.

This year I'm planning on using paperslide videos. If you aren't familiar with a paperslide videos take a look at this video created by Lodge McCammon. He was our convocation speaker last year and introduced us to paperslide videos. I didn't use them last year, honestly I'd forgotten about them until I saw another presentation on them last week at Podstock, an edtech conference. On the first day of school students will create an "All About Me" paperslide video. Take a look at my example:

There you have it my Five for Friday! Have a great weekend and an even better week! See you next Friday.